Welcome to the Painting Challenge. Here you will find the fabulous, fevered work from miniature painters from around the world. While participants come from every colour, gender, age and nationality, they have at least three things in common: they love miniatures, enjoy a supportive community and they have all taken the Challenge.
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Friday, 4 March 2016

And I'm off to the woods now- once I finish this. Land Nav, Ruck March, Weapons Qual, and other fun infantry tasks! ;) I'm good with it as I do love the snow almost as much as the woods. I have finally finished my Empire Light Wizard and his posse of Light Acolytes.

He and his crew were the most fun I had painting out of this group. I probably should've toned down the color some, but I think the purple and blue punches up the white robes and red shoes does scream OldHammer. They were exiled from my incomplete Empire Army that is now 99.9 % plastic. An old Elector count as a general is all that remains.

The fellows flanking the metal engineer -also exiled have replaced the Light Wizard.

The Bright Wizard from GW plastic kit. I may get another one as it has lots of great bits and you can make 2 wizards.

The bright wizard brings the boom to the battlefield. My daughters play the spectrum of pony elves so he will have plenty of Elven wood to burn! ;)

The Amethyst Wizard is my favorite, I like the background of them and their ties to the sect of Morr. Morr is the god of death and his priests tend to the dying and dead. They maintain the "Gardens of Morr"-cemetery - and ensure all is peaceful and quite as they continue silent contemplation and raise lavender roses in the cemetery. Should a Necromancer, Ratman, or some other foul miscreants disturb the peace, the Amethyst wizards and priests of Morr are very unforgiving! ;)

The engineer carries his tools and his repeating rifle, the wizards have all sorts of nifty details on them .

And the greatswords....these fellows also were exiled and replaced with plastic troops. I dug em out of the lead mountain as they are the closest I have to Italian War troops although these fellows will instead be delving in Mordheim.

They took forever. I was experimenting with black vs white primer and expanded NMM to gold hues. I've repainted them so many times that I'm uncertain which ones started as white or black except for the champion who was coated white. I just can't quite get the yellow down yet on the armor or clothing.

These were a gift from a friend who gave me a lot of Wargames factory and GW scifi stuff. I have no idea where they were made.

They do have a lot of character and will be used as proxy bodyguard for my Tau Etheral.

I also plan to use them in pulp games and as an Alien force in my Sci Fi games with the kids. They may even appear in the Superhero gaming too!

The fellow in the front is the leader as he has extra bling and no collar. I also painted colored spots on the heads of them all. Maybe paint maybe alien freckles. But the troopers have yellow spots and the caped fellows have blue ones. It was really a fun way to include them altogether with color, match them up to my Tau, and reinforce that these aliens also have a caste system.

These are the last of my Defiance Games marines. I added all sorts of bits to them to create the Genovain Dragoons.

The planet Genova is largely agricultural with some nice beaches. The Genovian Dragoons were sent to reinforce another world. Shortly after their arrival an outside sponsored coup overcame Genovia. The Genovian forces hired a contractor to take them home, but unbeknownst to them the contractor was allied to the coup and jettisoned the "whole" army into deep space.

The Genovian Dragoons are now a world-less mercenary force doing all they can to get back home. The mix of gear shows the hardships they have endured. Their story also is taken from a tale evolved by my kids and I from my own deployment when the family hit some rocky financial times due to political posturing and the kids were worried I'd be left overseas. This way I shown them daddy is coming home anyway possible.

These last 10 do not really count for points as they were block colored back when I first came home from Afghanistan. All I did was base em, ink em, paint some camouflage and highlight them.

They are my Scifi Jannisaries, and this is a chalk of them as they fit perfectly in the VTOL. They excell in rapid response, ship fighting, urban ops, and recon. Evan also wanted to see some scifi Fez, and it wouldn't be AHPC without a few Fez! ;)

Well David, another breakneck-pace of painting even while you were supposedly going to take a "break". Quite an eclectic assortment for us to enjoy here. In fact, it seems to be some kind of informal commitment between you, the French Jester and Alex to hit us with the greatest variety possible in some of these submissions!

It is always nice to see Oldhammer figures. Personally, I would rather have a root canal than pick up "Age of Sigmar", so there is always a twinge of regret when I see Oldhammer stuff but these sure do look fine. The Greatswords in particular stand out for me. You also have quite a show of Sci-Fi for us again. Those Tau-look-a-likes are very interesting - maybe someone in the Challenge recognizes where they are from? They will certainly look sharp on the table. I quite enjoyed the story of the Genovians, and the connection to your own family.

All in all, another very nice entry. So the total is 13 28mm fantasy figures and 16 28mm Sci Fi figures, as well as 10 "bonus" chaps who don't score, but still add their bulk to the post. Well, that will get you another 145 points! I wish you the best in your "fun infantry tasks" - although "ruck march" doesn't sound really "fun" to my soft civilian mind...

As I put it last week... Ei will be bäck. So here I am. Nothing special this week, actually very simple fare. 20 Endoskeletons for the Terminator Genesys game.

All in all these were a very simple paint job. I airbrushed a coat of Chrome paint on and a airbrush blue wash over the weapons, for a very light OSL effect. Red eyes, light grey teeth a satin varnish and they were done.

I kept the bases very simple and bare to depict a ground with nuclear fall-out and no feels and whistles.

As I said very simple. Cleaning them up, basing them and preparing them, took longer than painting. Why repairing them, you ask? Well some genius decided to do the heavy and support Endos (the picture above) in metal. The models for Terminator are 28mm. Since the Endos would have to fit inside the human skin (if used as infiltrators) they are essentially very slim skeletons. with the plastic minis that is fine... they are a bit thicker and robust, but the metal ones are not. One broke off at the ankles during painting, with another the arm broke in half. The legs and arms are so thin, that I could not pin them, even with a .1mm wire. So I had to glue the wires to the outside. I guess the game would have been better served in 32mm. I hope they survive a couple of games!

Pointswise, these are 20 28mm minis, but 5 of them are prone (and missing their legs) so they should only be worth half points max, so a total of 87,5 points.

Next week will see some more inspired work again. I promise!

Ah the spookiest of the futuristic figures - the dreaded Terminators! Considering how ominous they are supposed to be, it must be a little disappointing to be dealing with miniatures that were so brittle. Imagine the resistance being able to snap these beasts at the ankles with the whiff of a paint brush :)

Well, anyone who can bother with an airbrush, much less fiddle with "Object Source Lighting" has my respect. Simple? Well, I guess that depends on your perspective. These certainly look clean, but I wouldn't call them simple, especially if they are snapping at the ankles when you paint them!

I'll top you up to 90 points for coolness factor and the patience it would have taken to pin the figures on the outside of the model! Well done Burkhard, and we look forward to more next week!

I promised some Oldhammer a while back, and now is the time I'll deliver. Staying with a grim dark(tm) theme, but this time in a larger scale!

If there is anyone in the Imperium with as large steel ball as an Imperial Guardsman it has got to be an Adeptus Arbites officer. Going up against alien scum might be bad, but at least you have some heavy back up. An enforcer will have to go down into the bowels of a hive city with little else than his weapon and badge to bring order into the world of gangers and mutants. So with the introduction done these are 5 of the 7 Adeptus Arbites sculpts from the early 90's. Still missing the last two, so if you happen to have them sitting unused I'm more than happy to give them a new home :)

What could be more ballsy than going up against a Defiler with only a bolt pistol and a power maul?

Arbites are at least for me some of the most iconic 40k models. Might have something to with seeing the Stallone Judge Dredd film at a very impressionable age and getting my hands on some of the comics soon after. Beefed up cops with trigger discipline that would make US cops look like girl scouts somehow just seems to work brilliantly. With the same kind of characters in my favorite miniature universe I was instantly sold on the Arbites enforcers. Now looking back at some of these older Citadel sculpts and how a lot of the aesthetics is completely copied from somewhere else, it's a bit funny that now they are going after everyone and their cousin for even the smallest IPR infringements.

I wanted the bases to be urban themed to show them battling in the depths of hive worlds with some corrugated steel, rubble and rusty barbed wire thrown in. For the colour scheme I chose the traditional black and red that features quite often on the older artwork and some studio miniatures of the time. It was bit of a tricky combination as I find both red and black quite hard to highlight as red easily tends to turn into orange and black into gray. In the end I ended up just doing a dark gray edge highlight on the black areas and a bit of layering on the red. Turned out rather nicely, though the black is a bit hard to see in the pictures. Taking photos of black minis against a black background wasn't too easy.

With these done I guess it's time to play Necromunda again! I think the last time I played a game was in the early 00's with my old gang, that has sadly been sold with most of my other old minis when I quit the hobby for a few years in my late teens. Still it's never too late to get back in as it's a great game system. And what would be better than bashing in a few ganger skulls while dishing out the Emperor's justice.

Painting this week has been dreadfully slow with a minor panic at the office due to customers showing up unannounced for a three week long visit to tour all our factories etc. Luckily most of the stuff related to our team has now been dealt with so I can breath once again and hopefully have some more free time. I guess buying stuff for tens of millions does seem to give them a bit more leeway with how they can act :)

The odd moments I've had to paint have been slightly disastrous at times as I've managed to spill my brush washing cups onto the table two times this week, with the last one being just after taking these pictures. The flooding has resulted in a few MDF and cardboard sabot bases becoming soggy and starting to swell quite a bit. It wouldn't be an issue, but I have half finished minis on them that now might have to be rebased. Considering that my normal procedure is to first do the bases and then paint the minis this will be quite a pain. I'm hoping that once they dry up I can salvage them somehow as I definitely don't want to start fixing them up now. On top of all that my air compressor is starting to act up and it's power button seems to be slightly broken and getting the thing started is tricky. Will have to tear it down this weekend in an attempt to fix it. AAARGH...

Adding to the injury, my local ice hockey team lost in the KHL in the first play-off round and started their summer holiday. So no Finnish dominance in the world's second best hockey league this year... Multiple injuries late in the season and frankly slacking off against an opponent that was considered an easy first round rival didn't really help out. Oh well at least there's NHL for a few months still! If they would just start to play at a more reasonable time for us ;)

More classic Citadel goodness Samuli! These Arbites figures are wonderful and look every bit the part of menacing, tough-as-nails figures of Imperial will and law to be deployed against the scum of any hive depths. Black can be a real SOB to sort out, but you've done excellent work here, and I believe the red has turned out beautifully as well. A solid 25 points!

Spilled water - on figures? Ouch. I think we've all faced similar disasters - at our own hand, or sometimes at the hands of others. I'm fortunate (knock on wood) that I haven't pulled that move in a while, but I did manage to recently spill some Vallejo primer on the hardwood floor upstairs. Cleaning that up was a LOT of fun - maybe not as bad as re-basing, but still way better than a divorce.

I can relate somewhat to your hockey woes, but at least your team made the playoffs. Not to worry, however. Despite the miserable time difference, the NHL still has months of trench-warfare slogging ahead as the Stanley Cup Playoffs come into view. I hope you will enjoy a few games...

I slowly catching up my "base and flock it!" backlog this week, at least on my Chinese infantry.
These figures are from Essex Miniatures. I painted them to replace some older ones I had painted previously. The spears and halberds have been cut off and changed for plastic spears and I have added a banner from the excellent "Little Big Men" studios.

The main issue was to flock them like those I already based some years ago, so I could mix and match them on the table it if needed.

I also worked on more generic Chinese troops in case I want to play something different. These are bowmen and crossbowmen. I'll paint the same skirmishers but with a brown base to use them in medieval settings too.

To me, this is not a true "points bomb" because the painting was done during the 3 and 4 weeks ago.
I still have some biblical, hellenistic, carthaginian and generic renaissance troops waiting their turn in the queue as I try to finish basing.

But I did paint sone figures this week - some Gauls with a new idea in mind, inspired by the magnificent figures of Miss Anne. Only it is on a more modest scale of course - don't forget that I'm only a jester ;-)

I did a white undercoat and washed it in my mixture (the wash, known as "frenchjester's bath" is on my blog). Then I put a red glaze called Bloodletter (from Games Workshop) on the flesh areas. Once dry I highlighted here and there the skin with the Ungor Flesh of Games Workshop, and added the details.

Here is the subject just below:

Borix the Bard is a limited edition sculpted by Westwind Miniatures for a French friend of mine
(guess how much money he spent for the Kickstarters??) who play Gauls and all sorts of French armies all along the French history

I'll use it as commander of my Ancient celtic mercenaries.

There are some conversions like heads and shields swaps among these warriors, the shields are inspired by the paintwork done on an Ancient British army by one of my paint masters the great Ian Speed. I find the " so fast" result on the skins very interesting ( enough to self congratulations ;-)).
more of them will certainly follow...thanks a lot Anne!

Bien fait come toujours, Gilles! Well done. Whenever you got the painting done, so long as it was done during the Challenge, then this looks like a real points bomb to me. A lot of variety here (Chinese? Super cool!) but I quite like Borix the Bard, and I envy the esteem in which his colleagues appear to hold him (and the apparent strength they have to carry him around like that). And I'm sure Anne will be pleased to have influenced the work of a painter as prolific and proficient as yourself!These 79 figures, along with a couple of extra points for spear replacing mayhem and the banner, get you 160 points. What will the Jester have for us next week? J'attend avec enthousaisme...

So good to have Thursday out of the way, as I'm burning with jealousy at the Aussies and their continued complaints about summer, while winter clings to my home town like a dessicated swamp hag. As I check the calendar, I see spring approaches, although it often arrives in Winnipeg with the reliability of a "new release" from Battlefront i.e. about two months after it is pronounced, so I wait in my bunker and grumble while the Winnipeg Jets race to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Millsy and his heat waves...

All the same, we are into March now, and starting to run out Challenge runway. I'd better get some more bloody stuff painted! And as for the Friday gang, they put on quite a show last week, but we'll have to see if we can top that - or the points bombardment unleashed this week by the Wednesday crew...

More feats of brushwork await as we cruise towards another weekend...on with the posts!